Università Roma Tre

From the late nineteenth century, artists have sought new forms of "vision" beyond the traditional ways of representing the visible reality. Under the influence of new scientific and philosophical theories, psychoanalysis, but also esotericism and spiritualism, using traditional or new media such as photography and film, collage, readymade, photomontage, psychic automatism, animation etc., the avant-garde movements have expanded the frontiers of the visible world to the regions of the unconscious and of the "fourth dimension".

The course covers the key moments of this path by examining, in the period between 1860 and about 1940, works, movements and key figures as well as figures of precursors and references to literature and film.

Among the artists discussed during the course: Courbet, Manet, van Gogh, Gauguin, Marey, Picasso, Boccioni, Balla, Bragaglia, de Chirico, Duchamp, Picabia, Haussmann, Dix, Höch, Grosz, Ernst, Man Ray, Brassai, Giacometti, Magritte.

Exam

The exam consists of free-response questions. Some of the questions require students to look at an image in order to answer. Students are required to know the historical and stylistic developments of the visual arts between 1860 and 1940; they must be able to address the main topics of the course and to analyze the works of the artists above mentioned.

Essays

Walter Benjamin, Piccola storia della fotografia, in Aura e choc, Einaudi 2010
Stephen Kern, Il tempo e lo spazio, Il Mulino 2007: capitoli 4, Il futuro; 5, La velocità; 6, La natura dello spazio, pp. 117-226

Manifestos

Manifesto del futurismo (1909)
Manifesto tecnico della pittura futurista (1910)
André Breton, Manifesto del surrealismo (1924)

Main reference

Denys Riout, L’arte del ventesimo secolo, Einaudi 2002, pp. 111-189 and pp. 253-331

General reference

Mary Acton, Guardare l'arte contemporanea, Einaudi 2008
Hal Foster et al., Art since 1900, MIT Press
Francesco Poli (a cura di), Arte moderna. Dal Postimpressionismo all'Informale, Electa 2007

Textbook:
Hal Foster et al., Arte since 1900, Thames and Hudson